A Green Renaissance IV – Listen:
New: ENVIRONMENT
Category Archives: Environment
A solar panel mission
Last week author and activist Bill McKibben was on David Letterman talking about the environmental challenges facing America. This week 350.org the grassroots organization he founded began their round trip from Maine to Washington DC. The trip is called ” Put Solar on The White House.” In 1979, President Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. In 1986, President Reagan removed them and they were never replaced. Years later, Unity College in Maine adopted the panels where they have lived ever since. Until now.
Bill McKibben and a group of Unity students are driving one of the original Carter panels from Maine down to Washington, DC. They’re asking President Obama to put solar back on the White House. Thus far, however, we have not gotten a firm response from the administration, even though other world leaders have pledged to join a Global Work Party on Oct. 10 (10-10-10). Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldive Islands, for instance, will be on the roof of his official residence bolting down panels donated by Berkeley, CA based solar company Sungevity.
Update A Green Renaissance
QuestPoint n the Mix, QuestPoints’ companion podcast site recently introduced, A Green Renaissance a new series offering audio updates on the green movement and consciousness.
As interest in environmental matters continues to go mainstream people throughout our society and around the world are seeking new ways to enrich their lives. “In fact I think we are entering a new green renaissance not unlike that of the Renaissance that spread through out Europe in the 16th century. Then as now… there was a cultural movement that profoundly influenced education, religion, science, literature, philosophy, art, politics, and other aspects of life.” We are seeing all those factors and others come into play now. Listen: A Green Renaissance III
New LA school named after Al Gore
Los Angeles has named a new high school of environment science after former vice president Al Gore and author/activist Rachel Carson. And what better way to honor the two great environmentalists than by building the school on a contaminated site?
The Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences—due to open in a week, on September 13—sounds like a great place for the leaders of tomorrow to begin learning more about the world around them. And they can start by learning about how the place where their school is built is “terribly contaminated,” according to environmental activists, thanks to “toxic soil” containing “more than a dozen underground storage tanks serving light industrial businesses.” Um, and, “the underground tanks of an adjacent gas station.” Yes, they will certainly learn about those things, as long as they don’t die.
Don’t sweat it, though! The L.A. Unified School District is promising parents that the school will be safe by opening day, and they’ve been replacing the toxic soil (“enough to hold a four-story building”) with fresh, healthy soil from elsewhere. It only cost four million dollars!
Oh, and also, “an oil well operates across the street,” but, again, “officials said they’ve found no associated risks.” Except for the risk that students will grow up with a highly-developed sense of irony! Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.
Al Gore on global climate change see here
Environmentalist Bill McKibben call to action
Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben sat down with David Letterman on the Late Show to discuss climate change and the actions desperately needed to confront it.
McKibben says that the dire environmental problems we face aren’t entirely unmanageable, and we have the capabilities to provide some solutions, but there are certain groups — like the oil and gas industry — that don’t want that kind of progress to be made. “Until we build a movement big enough to challenge them, we won’t solve it,” McKibben tells Letterman.
McKibben describes the environmental grassroots organization he started last year with 7 colleges kids, 350.org, and how it exploded into a worldwide movement when their “International Day Of Climate Action” succeeded with 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries.
This year, they expect to make an even larger impact on 10/10/10 for what McKibben describes as a “global work party.” The organization is putting pressure on President Obama to restore solar panels to the roof of the White House, and is calling on people across the world do their part in addressing climate change in their local communities. “If I can go to work and do something, then I damn well expect my political leaders to do something,” McKibben says.
HOUSTON
Waste Management, the nation’s largest trash hauler, said Wednesday that it purchased a majority stake in organic lawn and products maker Garick LLC in order to expand its organic recycling business.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Garick’s operations will add over one million tons of processing capacity as well as commercial and consumer organic products to Waste Management’s organics recycling business.
Waste Management Inc., based in Houston, has been working on boosting its organic efforts since last year when it made an investment in Terrabon. The company also made an investment in Harvest Power in January.
Another oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico
By Warren Richey CS Monitor
A fire on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico has been extinguished, and officials say oil does not appear to be leaking from the facility. The US Coast Guard is at the platform roughly 80 miles south of Vermillion Bay in Louisiana, and will continue to monitor the facility for signs of a leak, a Coast Guard official said on Thursday.
The announcement was welcome news along the beleaguered Gulf coast – a region that is still working to overcome the effects of the summer-long oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig. US Coast Guard Capt. Peter Troedsson told reporters in New Orleans that officials near the rig have not been able to confirm an earlier report of a mile-long sheen of oil. No oil has been spotted in the water by Coast Guard officials, he said.
“The boats and aircraft on scene cannot see a sheen,” he said. “We remain ready to respond if any sheen becomes visible.”
The fire broke out Thursday morning, forcing all 13 crew members off the rig and into the water. They were later picked up by an oil services boat. No injuries were reported.
The offshore oil production facility, known as Vermillion Block 380, is in 340 feet of water. In contrast, the sea at the 
Deepwater Horizon rig is a mile deep.
If a leak is detected at the Vermillion rig, the relative shallow water would make response and repair efforts significantly easier than were experienced at the Deepwater Horizon rig. The facility is owned by Mariner Energy Inc., an independent oil and gas exploration and production company based in Houston. The platform collected production from seven wells producing about 1,400 barrels of oil per day and 9 million cubic feet of gas. Production was shut down, the company said, before the crew evacuated. “Automated shutoff equipment on the platform safely turned off the flow of oil and gas from the platform’s seven producing wells before the fire occurred and the crew evacuated,” a statement from Mariner said. There is no indication how the fire started. Officials say there will be an investigation.